Gordimer Nadine - The House Gun

Khulu; behinds shifted to make place for him next to Claudia. She lifted her hand, it sank towards her lap then lifted again, a tendril reaching out, found and pressed a moment the large warm back of his hand.

Yes, I can say I know him well, very well, he said when Motsamai led his testimony. And the young woman? Yes, Natalie too. Since she joined our place. But Duncan, before that. In the well of the court, where no signs of recognition are exchanged, Khulu smiled directly at Duncan as if he had just walked into his presence in an ordinary room somewhere. Hi, Duncan. It was because of this that Claudia wanted to touch him.

— Before Natalie joined the friends — what were relations like between those living in the house?—

— Oh very nice. We got on well, that’s why we got together, nê?—

— You, David Baker, Carl Jespersen and Duncan Lindgard. You were all homosexuals?—

— I don’t know about Duncan, really. He didn’t live in the house. Anyway, then he brought a woman along … but the rest of us, yes, we are men. Gay.—

— Some of you were intimate with one another?—

— Yes.—

— Were you aware that Duncan had a relationship of this nature?—

— Yes.—

— And who was the man?—

— Jespersen. Carl was the kind who when he takes a fancy to someone, that person can’t escape him. He seemed to get a kick out of making it with Duncan, I don’t think Duncan had had our kind of experience before, I mean, that a man could feel that way about him, Jespersen could be such a charmer. He could make you feel like you were missing something great in life if you passed up on him. He was from overseas and all that, he thought he was special. Like some kind of food or drink from there. Something we hadn’t tried.—

— So you observed that Jespersen was having an affair with Duncan. Surely this wasn’t surprising, in your set-up?—

— No, it was. Because Duncan was straight, we knew that. There are a lot of straight people among our friends. He took the cottage and sort of shared the house not because he was one of us, gay, but because we got on well in other ways. He’s an interesting guy. I’d call him a real artist in his designs of buildings. You can work out ideas with him, politics, art, music, God — no frontiers. —

— Was Natalie James the cause of the break-up of the affair? —

— No way. It happened before she came on the scene. Jespersen got tired of it. Quickly. He was like that with everything. That’s why he’d moved around in so many countries. He broke off with Duncan.—

— What was Duncan’s reaction? Did he take the same casual attitude?—

— Not at all. He was upset. Couldn’t understand why he’d been so involved, you know, emotionally, and then just thrown over.—

— How did you know all this? From observation only?—

Khulu was looking at Duncan again, as if Duncan would join him in confirmation. — He talked to me. I didn’t know how to get him to understand … he was in a bad way … his ideas, some of them were different from ours, certainly from Carl’s.—

— Did you succeed in consoling him?—

— I think I got him to see that his reaction was, how shall I say, a bit — inappropriate, that was it, to make a fuss, a drama, was spoiling all the good things about our kind of life on the property, that he liked so much.—

— So the incident, as it seemed to you, was smoothed over?—

— Oh he calmed down.—

— He and Carl Jespersen continued to live in the group, as friends?—

— That’s right. And when he brought the girl along and set her up with him in the cottage, that looked fine, the right thing for him. At first.—

— Why ‘at first’? What happened after? Didn’t the men at the house like her?—

— We all got on with Natalie. Though Carl when he was in a bad mood would carry on with all his usual stuff about women — make fun behind Duncan’s back, sometimes, of what he said was going on in the cottage with Duncan and her — thoughts about women in general, but at the same time he and she and Duncan, well, they went along together, were good friends. We really forgot all about that business between Duncan and him. He was the one who found her that job at his advertising firm and Duncan was pleased she at last had work that might interest her, something in her line, she writes, you know.—

— So what was it that no longer looked fine, for Duncan?—

— She’s a strange person. Well, he knew that — she’d tried to kill herself, there was that business of the child — she’d he the life of the party one minute and all over him, and the next she’d be jeering at him, attacking him for what she would say was ‘he wanted her to be like that’.—

— Be like what exactly?—

— Happy. ‘Performing her life for him’—that’s exactly what she always said. That’s why I remember the words.—

— Did he tell you about this or was this type of scene taking place in the house, in front of you others?—

— Oh we were all there, around to see, to hear.—

— What was Duncan’s reaction when she taunted him in front of their friends?—

— He was so patient with her. Like with a sick person. Although she gave him hell. You could tell, it was hell. He would go about next day very depressed. But he didn’t talk to me or any of us about it — not the way he talked to me over the fling with Jespersen, for instance.—

— So the relationship between Natalie James and Duncan was not happy?—

— She tortured him. Really. She even tried again to commit suicide, it was with pills, and he seemed to think it was his fault. But you could see, he always tried again, to get her right. You couldn’t understand how he could keep on.—

— He loved her?—

Now this witness looked to the judge, who was impervious to the feel of eyes upon him. Khulu appealed to him, to all who judge, human or divine. — Who of us can say what it means to love.—

In the person of the samurai, the Prosecutor turned that face to the public in moments of solicitation during his cross examination of Dladla.

—‘Who can say what it means to love.’ Indeed, we can say that it is common knowledge that it means to be jealous. Jealousy is the passion that arises from love and is stronger than love itself, as it ruthlessly abandons all respect for the right to life of the cause of the jealousy, the man who has taken the lover’s place in the arms of the loved one. You describe the way the accused was devoted to the care of Natalie James, over-protecting her to the point when, as she has testified, this was offensive to her dignity, you have recounted his slavish attachment and behaviour. Do you not think that, with this background to the relationship, having come upon Carl Jespersen in the act with the loved one, his reaction must inevitably be jealousy? Violent jealousy. The shock that he has described — wasn’t that the extreme impact of jealousy? When he went back to the cottage that night, when he waited in vain for her to return, when he spent the day alone there, wasn’t it jealousy that he was brooding on?—

— I don’t know.—

— Wouldn’t you say he was extremely possessive about her, on the evidence of his general behaviour?—

— He felt responsible for her.—

— That may be another way of putting it. Why do you think your friend killed Carl Jespersen if it wasn’t out of premeditated jealous revenge for making love to Natalie James?—

— Killing a person.—

All around, the public is stilled with anticipation. How will he go on? It excites this audience, admitted for free, to think that the samurai has this victim cornered.

— I know Duncan; so well. He doesn’t have a gun. Nothing. He was not sitting there planning to go and kill Jespersen. It is not in his nature. Never. I swear on my own life. It couldn’t ever have happened like that: that he was going to look for Carl to kill him. I don’t know how it happened — but not that. God knows how. I don’t understand killing.—